New York officer shot dead unarmed man in Brooklyn: New York Times

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A New York City police officer on routine patrol shot and killed an unarmed man in the dimly lit stairwell of a public housing project in Brooklyn, the New York Times reported on Friday.

The uniformed officer and his partner encountered the 28-year-old man while on "vertical patrol" at about 11 p.m. on Thursday at the Louis H. Pink Houses in the East New York section of Brooklyn, police said in a statement.

The statement did not say whether the man was carrying a weapon. But the Times reported witnesses said the man was unarmed.

The officer, who was descending from an eighth floor landing in the stairwell when the man entered at the seventh floor, fired a single shot and struck him in the chest, police said. He was pronounced dead at a nearby hospital.